Current Institutional Affiliation
University of California / Berkeley

Award Information

International Dissertation Research Fellowship 2011
Institutional Affiliation (at time of award):
Area and Cultural Studies, University of California / Berkeley
Modernism and Social Realism as Aesthetic Models in Post-Independence India

My project focuses on debates in Hindi literature and discourse over literary models, particularly Modernism and Social Realism, during the twentieth century following the independence of India. I examine these debates, and the formal problems of literature connected to them, through looking at the writing of Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh (1917-1964), a Hindi writer known primarily for his poetry. Muktibodh thought and wrote widely on problems of literature and politics, and his work allows me to examine the way in which these debates influenced the development of new styles and literatures which would eventually transcend the terms of these debates. My research will be primarily archival, based out of New Delhi and Bhopal, with side trips to various small libraries in New Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh. I will be looking at literary and cultural journals from approximately 1940-1970, and examining the literary and cultural criticism and debates of the time. Furthermore, while in India I will be actively collaborating with scholars of Hindi, in part to prepare translations of the poetry and criticism of Muktibodh.

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